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2.4.11: What was the "Vileness" after the Aiel War?

[Richard Boye]

Well, there were several scandalous affairs involving Aes Sedai which occurred during the years after the Aiel War:

The Amyrlin, Tamra Ospenya, died mysteriously.
Several prominent sisters died, also mysteriously.
The Red Sitters in the Hall were exiled, and the reasons were sealed to the Flame. (Sealed to the Flame = Officially, "only the Amyrlin need know," but often the Amyrlin will swear a sister into her confidence (e.g. Elaida sealing Seaine to the Flame about Alviarin and the BA))
A campaign of murder was instituted against "lucky men."
Thom's nephew and quite a few other men were gentled illegally.

Most of the links between the events were given out in various places throughout the series, but NS finally nailed down some of the events.

This is now what seems to be the sequence of events:

Tamra Ospenya, the Amyrlin during the Aiel War, was murdered by Jarna Malari in an effort to learn what she knew about the Second Coming [ACOS: Prologue, Lightnings, 42]. Jarna was the leader of the BA at this point. Tamra was also the Amyrlin who was present when Gitara Moroso had her Foretelling about the Rebirth.

Tamra was canny enough to know that there was some Black Ajah activity afoot and swore Siuan and Moiraine to secrecy. From NS, we learn that Tamra really wasn't stupid enough to just send two jumped up Accepted (Moiraine and Siuan) out to find the Dragon Reborn. She had very carefully and surreptitiously called in and sent out a group of Searchers, most of whom were later killed by the BA. It is still unclear whether Cadsuane was among the Searchers, but it's quite possible she was. The ones that Siuan and Moiraine were aware of were: Aisha, Kerene Nagashi, Valera, Ludice and Meilyn Arganya [L:NS, 668]. (Side note: Cadsuane gave Kerene and Meilyn as examples of the strongest in the Tower.)

From her interrogation of Tamra before killing her, Jarna learned something about the Second Coming, but misinterpreted it, and didn't realize that he had just been born. Possibly she construed what she had learned as the Dragon Reborn was ready to announce himself, or maybe she just learned that he was alive, but had no idea of his age. It's unlikely that any of the Searchers chosen by Tamra was BA, because then the BA would have known the same details Moiraine did (i.e. the Dragon was a baby, born during the final battle of the Aiel War, on Dragonmount).

In any event, the race to find the Dragon had begun, and the Black Ajah unleashed a campaign of murder to get to him first, killing anyone, man or boy, rumored to be "lucky," on the assumption that any man who seemed lucky might be channeling, since luckiness is one of the symptoms of unconscious channeling [L:NS, 712].

However, while that was going on, and for a while afterwards, the Red Ajah was running a second front of the campaign. Later on, after Jarna herself was Keeper to Sierin Vayu (the Gray with more than a touch of Red in her), she implemented a program of search and destroy. Working through Galina Casban, she directed her to use her Red minions to seek out any man that could channel and gentle him on the spot. It might have been the work of a selected cadre of Red Sisters who wouldn't balk at this flagrant violation of Tower law. We know it is illegal to gentle a man "extra-judiciously," away from Tower [ACOS: Prologue, Lightnings, 22]. By doing this, Jarna began a process that would circumvent the Tower's "Dragon-finding Process," which was to bring all channeling men to the Tower, where they put him to some sort of inquest to determine if he was the Dragon Reborn, and then gentled him. One assumes that they would not have gentled the Dragon Reborn. One of the victims of this 'search and destroy' mission was Thom's nephew Owyn. Presumably, Owyn is one the gentled men whose names do not appear in the Tower records. (One supposes that the fact that these men are not in the records is why it is dangerous to know about them.) Elaida's comments seem to insinuate that she participated in at least one of those missions [ACOS: Prologue, Lightnings, 22].

Meanwhile, all hell breaks loose. Ishamael puts Jarna Malari to death in a pain amplifier for messing with the program. We know that Ishy had notions of finding the nascent Dragon Reborn intact so that he could turn him to the Dark Side of the Force. What Jarna had done was severely reduce the odds of that happening, so it seems that he killed her for acting as a loose cannon. It is likely that this is what ended the campaign of murder by the Black Ajah, but the Reds' illegal search and destroy mission continued [ACOS: Prologue, Lightnings, 42].

Two years later Sierin Vayu died. Ishamael clamped down on the Great Council of the Black Ajah to determine that none of them had anything to do with Sierin's death (one assumes that Ishamael had some plans for her). It is possible that she gave some sort of tacit approval toward the 'search and destroy sorties' (she was pro-Red) and the Red Ajah had a hand in killing her to silence her. Alviarin seems to think that the Reds did have a hand in her death, and disavowed any Black participation [ACOS: Prologue, Lightnings, 42].

Whoever was responsible, it was to no avail. The secret came out, and the Red Sitters in the Hall were exiled. Undoubtedly, the rest of the Hall assumed that they had also exiled the Red Generalissima, because pretty much all the other leaders of Ajahs were also Sitters. They exiled Toveine, Tsutama and Lirene, but left Galina untouched.

There is a slight quibble with that last part. We see from Toveine's POV in TPOD that she recalls her exile on a farm as lasting "twenty years," [TPOD: 26, The Extra Bit, 513] but that doesn't wash with the rest of the continuity, since we know that Owyn at least was gentled only fifteen years ago [TSR: 17, Deceptions, 195]. If Toveine and her fellow Sitters were exiled twenty years ago, that places their exile immediately after the War and probably even before Moiraine and Siuan learn of the BA murder campaign. This doesn't make sense, because if the murder campaign was the reason for their exile, it seems difficult to believe that they would have gotten off with mere exile. Furthermore, in ACOS, Elaida mentions that all three Sitters went into exile 15 years ago, which fits more squarely into the timeline [ACOS: Prologue, Lightnings, 21]. It's likely that Toveine was just exaggerating or rounding off to the nearest decade (or RJ slipped up).

In L:NS, we see that the Aes Sedai are out in force, and so all this search and counter-searching certainly makes it public knowledge that the Aes Sedai are up to something, but it is possible that the Tower put out the story that the reason for this unusually high level of Aes Sedai activity is the "Grand Coalition," the treaty organization that was formed to fight the Aiel. In L:NS, we also hear that there is a rumor of a channeling man in the Borderlands [L:NS, 642]. This story was probably fabricated by the AS searchers, so that the increased AS activity wouldn't be considered particularly odd. Another related tidbit is that the Aes Sedai seemed to have influenced fashion in the Borderlands by introducing veils, to better conceal their Ageless faces.

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